PAOLA PICIACCHIA

Dal dibattito sulle riforme all'istituzione della Commissione Bicamerale.

Interrogativi e prospettive

N. 180

Summary — At the centre of general attention, recently, the debate on constitutional reform has been, and continues to be, one of the discussions on Italian institutions about which it seems useful to reflect further.

The introduction of majoritarian (first past the post) democracy, the latest act in the slow process that began with the referenda, raises a number of questions about the future of our institutions which are such as to include the nature of the democracy towards which our country has decided to move and the teleological duties of the state, thus confirming, in a sense, the validity of the claims of Mortati about the close relationship between forms of state and forms of government.

The path taken with the introduction of majoritarian electoral rules has only partly started up the desired mechanisms, and it has made visible, on the other hand, the peculiarity and anomaly of the "Italian path" to reforms, where the push for institutional change came from below (through the referenda) and was preceded by the electoral reform, which does not guarantee anything about the future outcomes of institutional innovation; electoral form is rarely effective if it is not accompanied by an adequate rethinking of the form of government.

It is this rethinking that we should insist on. The rethinking should not make too explicit and superficial a reference to constitutional modelling and engineering, but should take as its starting point the weaknesses of the Italian parliament, and be based on the presuppositions that appeal to real mechanisms for the strengthening of the executive that can have an effect no only on stability but also on the efficiency of governments in such a complex context as that found in Italy.